Well, phew! That was in a word awesome. A real blast. Such fun. We had a nice alcove in the public bar and the "normal" people in the main part of the bar had a ball, too. Lots of positive feedback and people were even dancing and joining in on some of the numbers like Dance the Night Away and YMCA...

With an age span from 16 to 60 and a wide range of backgrounds it was a great mix. And with lots of good voices we were onto a winner. I think it's fair to say some of the "hardly ever had the uke out of the box before" folks struggled a little on the faster or more complex numbers, but there were plenty of two-chord songs to keep them onside. And many of those are just plain great songs anyway: like the aforementioned Dance the Night Away; and Iko Iko.

What was particularly nice was that there was a decent range of songs in the book and we could do requests to an extent - and it was the 16-year-old who chose some of the classics like Bye Bye Love; Hello, Mary Lou; Every Day...

We had about half who were folkies, a quarter who were established ukesters and a quarter who were neither.

And when we got onto the big pop/uke numbers like Sloop John B and Bad Moon Rising, we were fabulous: some great harmonies.

Can't wait for the next one... Thursday 20th May, just in case you were about to ask...

Hamish, for Berko Uke Random Pluckers (BURP!)